I think their plan is just to apply a very literal reading of DDoS (“distributed denial of service”) to the Antisphinx – by having enough Barons (distributed) ask questions at once, sooner or later she won’t be able to hold all of them to provide answers (denial of service), meaning that at least one of the questions she will be unable to answer, getting them past her challenge.

A light-year is the distance that light travels in a year. A light-hour is the distance that light travels in an hour. And converting timings to distances and back is what special relativity equations are all about, so the light-hour as a distance makes a whole lot of sense more than a laden-European-swallow-hour. So, using google to help with converting:https://www.google.com/search?q=1+mile+%2F+(c+*+3600+s)
There are ~1.5 nanoLight-hours in a mile.

Secondly, yellow is just encoded as a RGB hex code on computers. Brightest yellow is #FFFF00, which in decimal is (256 * (256^2 -1)), or 256 * 255 * 257. So what is a square number?

256 is square, it is 16 * 16, the square of an integer. However, 257 is prime, and only appears in the factorization of #FFFF00 once, so #FFFF00 is NOT square. If we allow _shades_ of yellow, then 4095 * 4095 = 16769025 = #FFE001, which is a nice vivid yellow, but it isn’t the purest yellow. In fact, I’d call it more gold than yellow…

The last has a correct answer, too. Either an eyeroll and silently turning away, or a fist to the face, or something in between, or even going in the other direction. It’s a question of social interaction, not of wordplay.

But yeah, by that last definition, a REALLY SMART and REALLY MEAN anti-sphinx ALWAYS has an answer: a laser to your face! :p

The term “troll” originated in USENet discussions. Back in the day, same a today, 90% of people would not actively participate in discussions, but follow them just the same. Those people were known as “lurkers”.

As it happened, discussions often reached consensus. With nothing left to discuss, the group then would often die of inactivity. Sometimes, however, a lurker would suddenly submit a post that called the consensus into question, thus re-invigorating the discussion and keeping the group alive. This one-time poster would then typically go back to lurking, but they were no longer a mere lurker, they were what was then known as a troll.

Fora used to pay people to keep discussion, and thereby traffic (and thereby advertising revenue), going.

These days, however, that seems to be the opposite of what fora want. Rather than discussion, reinforced echo chambers seem to be what is wanted. And people call anyone a troll for having an opinion that differs from their own, as if that would de-legitimise them.

Thinking is hard. If it can be avoided by turning the quality of making people think into an insult, people will do so.

The term had apparently already shifted meaning somewhat by the time I joined USEnet (1998). As I remember it, at that time “troll” meant someone who would deliberately start vicious arguments, not lively debates, and they weren’t lurkers, because they did this repeatedly.

I understood the word to come from the fishing term, via the phrase “trolling for newbies” (because only a newcomer to the group would be naive enough to take the bait), but maybe that’s a false etymology.

Interesting. I first heard the term troll in the early 90s’ on Geocities-era internet, where it seemed to mean “a person who does not actually hold the position they are advocating, but rather is just stringing together whatever sequence of words are necessary to get the people who posted prior to them to lose their goddamned minds.” This remained the vernacular definition of the term up through the peak of 4chan and SomethingAwful. Whatever you think of the walled gardens currently springing up all across the internet today, as corporate interests take over and sterilize everything, between today and the usenet days, there was a period where trolling meant exactly what people today think it means: posting just to get a rise out of people. Go look at the archived threads from that period where self-described trolls gloat about their exploits. Compare how many users or posts there were on usenet at its peak in 1993 to 4chan’s 22 million monthly visitors in 2016, and you’ll see where the evolution of language has moved the consensus on what term “troll” means. Even within this context, like the words “prank” and “irony,” I’ve seen the word “troll” misused dozens of different ways, to the point where it’s tempting to just throw up one’s hands and say the definition “depends on who you ask.”

I once even saw a post complaining that “trolls these days” are inferior to previous generations of trolls because the baseline quality of discourse has gotten so hyperbolic that modern trolls get in each others’ way. The general idea is, two trolls two diametrically opposed fake opinions would hijack the same forum thread at the same time, each thinking that the other guy genuinely believed what they were saying. But of course neither one was reacting because they were more interested in getting a rise out of the other guy than in actually making a point or “winning” the argument.

The result is both arguments became so obviously disconnected from reality that no other participant can take either of them seriously, and both trolls would just keep hitting each other over and over again until one of them ran afoul of TOS or the forum got tired of eating popcorn and watching them hit each other and the thread got closed. In all cases, the actual non-troll users would take the conversation elsewhere and start hammering away at the same old talking points without having thought or learned anything as a result of the troll’s involvement, but perhaps more importantly to the “modern” troll, without having gotten upset at the display of these two apparent fringe extremists publicly beating theout of each other in their forum. Surely rather than being subverted, the status quo becomes reassuring in the face of such a display.

(Sorry for the double-post, there was a problem with the Submit button moving down off the bottom of the form. Workaround is to tab down to the button, but I didn’t realize that earlier.)

Linguistic drift hit that one hard and fast then- I’ve never heard of the more benign version before!
(When someone’s relentlessly argumentative but sincere in what they’re saying, I think of them as more a flamer than a troll. There’s a bit of overlap.)

My experience is that most trolls act not to maintain discussions, but simply to cause trouble. This will vary widely, of course; however, I have never seen any good come from them. Posting random insults, inviting heated arguments (not rational debates) or invoking an Internet Backdraft (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InternetBackdraft) really don’t have any positive outcomes.

I may be using a slightly different definition of the term “troll,” however. I have always understood trolls to be non-constructive posters, usually troublemakers. Redefining “troll” to mean someone who posts controversial content for the sake of discussion as well as just for fun would both enlarge and de-venomize the category.

Personally, I prefer my definition. It seems to me to be more descriptive and generally applicable, given its narrower focus. To be sure, it warrants caution in interpretation wherever the term is used, but being on the Internet long enough will train cynicism and careful interpretation into anyone.

“Rather than discussion, reinforced echo chambers seem to be what is wanted. And people call anyone a troll for having an opinion that differs from their own, as if that would de-legitimise them.”

IMHO, it depends on the forum. When it comes to religion or politics, it seems that there are those who come for intelligent discussion and will give opposing viewpoints a fair shake if presented in a polite, respectful fashion, while others just come to cram their beliefs down others’ throats and won’t listen to anything the other side has to say. In a group like this, however, folks are reasonable enough to listen to opposing viewpoints and give them serious consideration because we have a polite conversation going, and the comments posted are often entertaining, if not always provoking serious thought.

Of course, there are places where the “discussion” is merely reinforcing the prevailing opinion like a mass folie a deux, unfortunately, but you’d find that in pretty much any subject if you look hard enough.

“Thinking is hard. If it can be avoided by turning the quality of making people think into an insult, people will do so.”

Meh, some people just like cutting others down and throwing around insults for the fun of it. And, as my roomie Derek likes to point out, “you just can’t confuse some people with the truth once their minds are made up.” Sometimes it’s easier just to insult someone in an ad hominem attack than to try and refute their points logically. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common trend in what passes for politics these days… Then again, as the old saying goes, “if you can’t dazzle them with intelligence, baffle them with bullshit”.

Never happened in the entire history of Internet, as far as I’m concerned – at least I’ve certainly never seen it happen. No, really. IT DOESN’T HAPPEN. One side invariably just gets tired of the obstinacy and obtuseness – faked or not – of the other party and gives up. Unsurprising, considering logic simply doesn’t work any more in arguments: even constructing an argument more rigorous than a mathematical proof is useless when the other party can’t or won’t follow the logic* and concede it being valid (which these days is, again, every single damn time). All you get is “yes but “. Probably because I’ve literally never, ever seen anyone willing to change any of his beliefs on anything either. And I’ve been looking for a long, loooong time, trust me…

* Before you accuse me of not-exactly-arguing-here-either, this is not arguing, this is a good old-fashioned rant, much obliged for reading it…

Did no one else notice that the questions (not the mom one) are from the quote:

“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite certainly, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask–half our great theological and metaphysical problems are like that.” –C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

Ah, but how do you tell which ones are nonsense and which ones are not? For instance, “is an alligator more green or more long?” is, against all appearances, a perfectly sensible question: it’s obviously more green, because it’s only long lengthwise but it’s also green along its width…